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Monday, August 18, 2008

Our First Full Day of First Grade

I know I told you I'd planned to start sooner, but vacation and moving Taylor to college and my sister, Tia, to a new home - plus a little recovery time - had to be fit into these past couple of weeks. Today, we did the full schedule, only about 30 minutes behind where I hoped to be. (That's typical of me anyway!)

Cullen's morning included a short devotional after breakfast, a little bit of handwriting practice (he is convinced that handwriting is eeevilllll) then one of his favorite subjects, math. After a short play break, we read a little history together about how early people lived, then talked about different countries and cultures. We'll be working some geography into this time as we go along. Cullen did a wonderful job on his reading, then managed to do a short copywork assignment without complaining.

For science, we learned about the water cycle (Everything is more fun on a whiteboard with markers!) and set a measuring cup out in the sun with a few ounces of water in it that we plan to check this evening to see if a measurable amount of water has evaporated. We had lunch and made a trip to the library, then he did a little work in his Explode the Code workbook on compound words.

Technically, that was it for our scheduled schoolwork, but he went ahead and made a page on sand crabs (discovered during our beach vacation) for his Nature Notebook. You can see I finished writing his sentence for him - after such a busy day, he said he just couldn't write anything else! So he wrote, "Sand crabs are the color of sand" and dictated for me to write, "so birds can't see them." I'm proud of his efforts on the little crab!

As I type, Cullen and his cousin/buddy, Justin, are playing together in his room. They have danced like crazy to some hip-hop addition facts cd's (hilarious!) and are now settled down to a game of Mario Cart. I'm sure as soon as they catch their breath, they'll be jumping around and bouncing off the walls again.

Oh! This past weekend, we made a trip to the pet store and bought a new home for Dookie. Looks like she's happy in her new digs, though it took her hours to figure out that the aquarium rocks are not edible. It was a lot of fun to watch her try!

About Me

Worth the click!

My cousin and friend, Jamie, whose blog is a really fun place, is featuring adoption stories from time to time. Whether you have adopted, are considering it or even if you know it's not for you, these are moving and inspiring stories.

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Wise Words

"Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each." ~Plato

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." Proverbs 22:6

Of all the joyous motives of school life, the love of knowledge is the only abiding one; the only one which determines the scale, so to speak, upon which the person will hereafter live.